The ground under the Soviet system was shaking

by Sylvie Tertzakian

Published: Saturday November 22, 2008 in Earthquake 20 Years On

Los Angeles - I will never forget Christmas 1988. One morning in mid-December of that year, I asked my then-eight-year-old daughter Taleen what she wanted Santa Claus to bring her for Christmas. She answered, "My Daddy." 

A few days earlier, my husband Garo had left on the U.S. State Department's rescue plane, for an earthquake relief mission to a traumatized Armenia. He was one of two Armenian doctors invited by the U.S. State Department to join its rescue team for their medical expertise as well as knowledge of the country and the system. Six weeks prior to the devastating earthquake of December 7, 1988, Garo and I had taken our young kids, Taleen and Aram, with us to Armenia, on his second medical mission.

History was being made that October, as Soviet tanks circled Yerevan's Lenin Square while thousands of people demonstrated in front of the Opera House for Karabakh's freedom. Demonstrators included groups of environmentalists who wanted the government to shut down the Nairit rubber plant, Christians with Bibles in their laps, and many others with various anti-Soviet agendas. Some of these impassioned demonstrators camped out for weeks and partook in a hunger strike in a desperate yet successful attempt to have their voices heard and to get their messages across.

While viewing the demonstrations in front of the Opera House juxtaposed with the endless line of Soviet tanks, I remember thinking that the ground under the Soviet system was shaking. And then, sadly and ironically, less than two months later, a massive earthquake shook the ground of Spitak, in northern Armenia. The collapse and destruction of the buildings, caused by the earthquake, was followed by the collapse of the Soviet system itself in 1991. The Armenia earthquake, which followed the disaster of Chernobyl two years earlier, helped expose the weakening core of the Soviet system. The Soviet state could not respond to the earthquake on its own and needed to reach out to other countries, specifically the West, for support. Garo, along with the U.S. rescue team, landed in Yerevan on December 11, 1988 to lend a helping hand.

Amid the shock and trauma, Garo would call from Armenia at odd hours of the day and night, essentially whenever a line would be available. He would report total chaos, explaining that the system was not at all prepared for an earthquake. Even transporting rescue teams was a problem. With the help of a friend, Garo had been able to organize a bus to take the doctors to an earthquake site.

However, despite such transport and other logistical problems, Garo would exclaim appreciation for how the international community showed organization and willingness to come to the rescue and exclaimed, "a Libyan plane, an Israeli El Al, the State Department plane, they were all parked on the tarmac, side by side. It was quite a sight!" And then, the phone lines would go dead, and I would wait anxiously for his next phone call.

On the next call, he would describe the earthquake zone as a scene from Dante's Inferno. On the next call, he would request dialysis machines and Bovie cautery machines for surgery. He would ask me to reach out to the local hospitals in Orange County, California, for donations.

During his absence, people would call our home in search of "fresh" news. Pharmaceutical companies, such as Baxter, would call at 3:00 a.m. to find out what was needed. Our home had become an emergency center for news and requests.

In the meantime, the death toll in Armenia kept rising. With each of Garo's calls, the number would rise. It reached an estimated 25,000.

In the afternoon of December 18, as his flight touched ground at Los Angeles International Airport, an anxious reporter from the Los Angeles Times was waiting for him to exit the plane. Equipped with a recorder, the reporter nudged Garo with questions during the ride from the airport to a hall in Glendale, where hundreds of Armenians had gathered to hear an eyewitness report from the earthquake zone. "I saw people carrying on their backs and on trucks any belongings they could salvage from their destroyed homes. It reminded me of pictures from the Genocide, except for the fact that the perpetrator was not Turkey, but the force of nature."

Later that evening, in the privacy of our home, Garo wondered if the Soviet system would survive the Armenia earthquake.

For Taleen, Santa Claus had listened to her request. Her daddy had come back home for Christmas.